Cleaning Out My Artistic Refrigerator

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Self Esteem By The Numbers

I seem to be on a recurring theme these days, but I did something yesterday that made me question just how much I believe in myself. As I said last night I had a little battle waging in my head between my “not good enough voice” and my inner cheerleader. (I am so not a cheerleader, quite frankly I lack a certain amount of enthusiasm, but that is a topic for another day.) I thought that I had to a certain extent conquered my feelings of inadequacy, but I was wrong. I put a piece of work on etsy yesterday. It is part of the fairy making I do. I hesitate to call it a craft, I think of it as art. Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for craftsmen and women. I think the word “crafter” has gotten a bad rap. Unfortunately thanks to shows of a certain caliber, crafting is far too often associated with items such as my most hated craft, the crocheted toilet paper roll cover. (I just had a visual image of one and cringed) I know there is a market for these kinds of items, I think it may involve blue hair of some sort, but I cannot think of a ….I’m sorry, I have no words. I feel that strongly about them. To get back to my point, there are many fine crafts people, people with envious skill and talent, and their work is art. I hereby decree that artists and true craftsmanship be one and the same. (I can do this because I should be ruling the world) My piece is a fairy playground. It took vast amounts of creative imagination, hours of intricate work, and numerous hot glue burns to create it. When I began to list it on etsy the doubt began to creep in. Materials ran me roughly twenty-five dollars. I originally thought to list it at $100, its one of a kind, unique, it’s art, but then “not good enough” spoke up. “No one will pay that much.”, or “It only cost you $25” (not including the day and a half labor). I’m sure you get the idea. I listed it at $65. When I told Dan he said I was crazy. Later in the evening I went back on etsy. I didn’t sign in, I just wanted to see how long it would take me to find my item in the search engine. I came across a fairy house created by another artist. No fairies, just the house. It was more than three hundred dollars. Yikes! Those must be very rich fairies, like Trump fairies. It was beautiful, but I couldn’t believe the price. Then I thought to myself, “This woman values herself, and her work.” I showed it to Dan, and then I raised my price to $95. When I told my saga to my daughter this morning, she too pronounced me crazy, and said $95 is too low. I haven’t changed it, but it did get me wondering about the connection between my pricing and my low artistic self-esteem. I always under price myself. So I guess I have to ask myself just how much my self-esteem is worth?

Something a little different tonight. Theresa gave me a pot of beautiful little daffodils today. I was out most of the day, so I decided to do a quick watercolor of them. I really didn’t care for my finished painting, but then I began to play with the Photo shop filters. I found several that I liked, suddenly I didn’t think the original was so bad. I’m going to post the original, one with a poster edge filter, and an eggshell crackle finish. I’m not sure which I like best.